Thursday, August 17, 2006

Ducking Out

I'm going on vacation for the next week.

By design, the beach-house we're renting -- in a part of the Outer Banks of North Carolina accessible only by four-wheel-drive vehicles or perhaps Bradley Fighting Vehicles -- doesn't have Net access, although I'm reliably informed that the water tastes like wine. Or was that vice versa? Better check the brochure...

This will be a period of Serious Disengagement from the World. I'm taking every volume of P. G. Wodehouse I own, a pair of good binoculars for birdwatching, and my camera. Maybe a change of clothes, but maybe not. And I am leaving the laptop at home.

Brave, I know.

I'm turning the keys of the Jingomobile over to a couple of goobers who may or may not choose to reveal their Secret Identities to you. I've left the decision up to them. I expect hijinks and japery to ensue. If they do not, the goobers will have the Empress of Blandings to answer to.

Catch you in a week.

-----

PS: Four thousand Pharynguloids through here over the last two days reading about PowerPoint and the US military's planning for Iraq, and, like, two of you drop a comment? Yeesh! What's a guy gotta do? Slow month, I guess...

Sorry, my mots just aren't as bon as yours. Many times I simply can't add anything of value. Doesn't mean I don't approve of the post, in fact, quite the opposite.

I don't think that blog readers realize quite how much most bloggers depend upon feedback to keep them going. Silence can indicate approval or assent, but it's usually taken as indifference or disapproval by the writer who has put his or her words out on a limb. If you like a blogger or a post, please say so!

on beyond Nags Head! ah, the memories... The girl I feel in love with on the Chincoteague ferry, until she got back in her daddy's car. Fratboys surfing the curling twofoot muddy breaks. Hideous sunburns and saltwater skeeters. Skooging my brother's buxom and enthusiastic ex-girlfriend in the dunes. Clouds of saltwater skeeters, but still. Yum. Je ne regrette rien.

And the one I hope I never lose -- pogoing to the Ramones in a tiny little warmbeer Nagshead dive. WTF they were doing there I'll never know. But for one night I got the 220 straight to the cerebellum, and damn it helped.

Amazing how stupid teenage thrashing transforms in luminous memory.

Here's hoping you get straight to the windrift saltlick big empty, no traffic jams or timeshare tours. Put up a mason jar of sun and wind to melt a creaky winter's morn.

And crabcakes! Oh, crabcakes! The only thing the Atlantic coast truly has over the Pacific...

I rarely comment because I like to think I'm a talented writer, and when my horseshit splatters hard in these comment threads underneath whatever the blogger has nailed up on top of it, it's straightfuck impossible for me to maintain that delusion.

Still, I guess we all need humbling once in a while.

Hey, over at alicublog one of his commenters mentioned Stan Lee! That water is more to my depth!

Hmm. Well, the best crabcakes I've ever eaten in my life have been some made from Dungeness crab meat, out here in Seattle. I had crabs and crabcakes in a few different places on the Atlantic; been out here for 32 years now, can state that when Dungeness crab is fresh, it beats any Atlantic crab, claws down!